She didn’t answer right away, but after about five seconds, said, “Where is everyone? Someone had to have started the fireplace.”
“Probably inside. Curtains are drawn.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, either.”
“What’s that?”
“The curtains.”
“I don’t understand…”
“It’s still daylight, Wash. It’s actually a perfect day. Who would cover up the windows on a day like this?”
“Good catch,” Wash said. He hadn’t seen that. He’d seen everything else that was wrong with the cabin except that. “No rebars over the windows, too.”
It was the first thing he noticed about the place—there was no security of any type over the exterior of the windows. The door, he could understand, because it took a lot to break down a wooden door, but the window glass was easy to break by even the weakest of ghouls.
“Maybe they’re so hidden they haven’t run into any issues with keeping people out,” Ana said.
“I don’t know about that. People who are smart enough to put solar panels on rooftops wouldn’t ignore simple security.”
Ana looked around. “Do you see any horses?”
“No. You?”
“No. Or any type of transportation. But someone was chopping wood not very long ago.”
“More wood for the fireplace, I guess.” He paused, then, “All right. We’re not going to get anywhere hiding in here.”
“You have a plan?”
“Let me take a look at it first. I’ll recon the place, see if I can spot anything on the other side.”
“How long’s that going to take?”
“Why? Are you in a hurry?”
She glanced up at the sky. It wasn’t dark yet. Like she’d said, it was a perfect afternoon, and it would be a few hours before the first hints of nightfall even appeared on the horizon.
“About an hour,” Wash said. “That should allow me to move without being seen. When I’m sure it’s safe, we can—”
Ana stepped out from behind the trees and into the clearing.
Goddammit, woman, Wash thought as he watched her walk calmly across the field toward the lone building.
He unslung the M4 and positioned it in front of him for an easy lift and shoot. He also took a couple of steps back behind a large tree that provided him with thicker cover but also allowed him to peek out (hopefully) unnoticed.
Wash watched Ana in front of him. She walked calmly forward, her hands visible at her sides. If she were even the least bit scared or reluctant, he couldn’t see it in the way she moved. Of course, he also couldn’t see her face at the moment, but Wash imagined it would look neutral—or whatever look she wanted him to see—
Here we go!
Ana had walked ten yards—eleven—when the cabin door opened and a thin figure stepped outside. It was a woman, and she was holding a bucket in both hands in front of her. Whatever was inside must have weighed a ton, because she was clearly straining even as she turned right toward the stream.
Ana had stopped as soon as she saw the woman. Frozen, really, out there in the open.
Wash flicked the safety off his carbine and lifted it slightly, forefinger next to the trigger guard while his left hand wrapped around the pistol grip. Just over a hundred yards separated him and the cabin—and the woman in front of it. Wash had taken shots at much longer distances without the benefit of an ACOG.
He was getting ready, trying to get control of his breathing, when Ana began running—right at the cabin and the girl.
“Emily!” Ana shouted.
The girl with the bucket stopped and looked over. A second later, the metal pail dropped from her hands and a large volume of water splashed the dirt and grass. But unlike Ana, the girl didn’t move. Wash was too far away to get a proper look at the girl’s face, so he couldn’t be sure what was happening.
“Emily!” Ana shouted again.
Wait, did she just say “Emily?”
The reality of what she’d shouted hadn’t registered with him in the first instance, but it did the second time around.
Emily. Ana had shouted the name Emily. That was her sister!
I guess it was a good thing we didn’t keep going!
Ana was running full stride across the yard now, even as the girl remained rooted in place. Damn, she was fast. Wash didn’t even know Ana was capable of that kind of speed. It was impressive. What else could she do that she was keeping from him? She was already at the halfway point and not even slowing down a bit, as far as Wash could tell.
Wash lifted the ACOG and got a good look at the girl—and the shock on her face as she watched Ana racing toward her.
What the hell is she doing?
For a moment Wash thought Emily didn’t recognize her own sister, which would explain why she wasn’t moving at all. But then that didn’t quite jive with the almost horrified look on the younger sister’s face as she watched Ana get closer, and closer.
Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong!
That “something” showed itself when the door behind Emily flung open and a second figure stepped outside. This time it was a man, and he was big enough that he filled out the open doorframe and towered over Emily even though he was still a few yards behind her.
Ana’s feet instantly dug into the ground as she slid to a sudden stop, and Wash could see her hand reaching backward.
The 1911. She’s going for the 1911!
Wash switched his crosshairs from Emily to the large man as he lumbered out of the cabin, and suddenly there was a gun in his fist.
Shit!
Wash was half a heartbeat from pulling the trigger when Emily turned and threw herself at the man, slamming her much smaller body into his large arm. The gun in the man’s hand bucked and a shot rang out, either because he had squeezed the trigger or Emily had created an accidental discharge. Either way, the round sailed high over Ana’s head even as she instinctively ducked in front of them.
Then Emily was in front of the large man, her body moving across Wash’s optics as he tried to line up a shot. He tilted the reticle upward, searching for and finding the man’s forehead, even as Emily’s blonde hair flailed back and forth.
He focused on the target’s face.
It was ugly. Square-shaped, with a massive jaw and a large nose that had been broken more than once. He had a goatee, but there was nothing on top, and sunlight reflected off his domed head.
Mathison? Wash thought.
Whoever you are, you’re a dead man.
Wash’s finger was on the trigger and he was pulling it, the crosshairs perfectly centered on the man’s forehead, when voices boomed from his right side.
He immediately swung the M4 in that direction as two figures, both clad in black and green camo, raced out of the woods with their own rifles.
Dammit!
They ran toward Ana, pointing their guns at her while Emily and Baldy continued to struggle at the cabin. Not that it was much of a fight, because the man simply raised his hand and the girl went flying to the ground.
“Emily!” Ana shouted.
Ana was raising herself back up from the ground as the two men swarmed her, their rifles pointed at her head. They were so close to Ana (Too close) that if one of them pulled his trigger, she was dead. But they didn’t shoot her; instead, one of them turned around and looked in the direction of the cabin.
The big man was stomping toward them while Emily tried to pick herself up from the ground. She looked hurt, or just stunned.
“Don’t shoot!” Baldy shouted as he stalked toward Ana. “I want her alive!”
Well, you’re not getting her, Wash thought and refocused his rifle on Baldy, while quickly crunching the numbers in his head.
Three targets. Two at just over fifty yards, and a third getting there soon enough. Easy enough shots with an ACOG-mounted M4. Hell, it wasn’t even going to be a fair fight. It was almost too easy—
A flurry of activity in the ba
ckground drew his scope’s focus, and Wash jerked the rifle slightly back toward the cabin as men burst out of the door. Emily, nearby, recoiled as they rushed past her.
Shit. Spoke too soon.
There were five of them, but only three had rifles. Not that the other two were unarmed, because they were all wearing gun belts and the ones without a long gun had pistols in their hands. They ran after Baldy (That’s gotta be Mathison) and ignored Emily completely as she picked herself up, staggering a bit to maintain her balance.
Wash recrunched the numbers in his head:
Eight men. All armed. He could take out the two closest to him, then Mathison—if that was actually Mathison—next. That would leave five. He could probably pick off one or two more before the rest got smart and either retreated back into the cabin or fanned out to make it harder on him. They would definitely return fire, and big tree in front of him or not, Wash wasn’t going to be able to dodge bullets from five separate guns firing at once.
And then there was Ana, still on her knees with her hands behind the back of her head as Mathison’s two camo-wearing thugs crowded around her. The two men were constantly moving, never staying at one place for more than a few seconds. Wash was in the wrong position to open up on full-auto. To do that, he’d have to take out the closest two, then Mathison, then quickly move to a better spot so he didn’t hit Ana while picking off the others.
And then there was Emily standing like a statue in the background.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
As the five men neared him, Baldy turned to face them and said something, gesturing calmly as he did so. He was giving orders, that much was clear, and the men jumped to obey by spreading out. Two of them began running in Wash’s direction.
And the hits just keep coming.
Wash took one, then two steps back even as he played the different scenarios in his head. But it didn’t matter what tactics he considered, because it kept coming back to the same thing:
Eight men. All armed. And Ana and Emily in his field of fire.
Eight men. All armed. And Ana and Emily in his field of fire…
Goddammit.
He kept moving until he’d put enough distance between him and the tree line that he could turn and hurry back to the horses. He glanced back one last time and could just barely make out Ana through the trees and bushes between them.
She was still on her knees as the two men in camo pointed their rifles dangerously close to her head. Baldy was also there, standing with his hands on his hips in front of her. Lording over her.
“Don’t be a fool,” Imaginary Old Man said inside Wash’s head. “Recognize when you’re outclassed and live to fight another day, kid.”
Live to fight another day, Wash thought as he quickly untied the horses’ reins and led them back, back into the woods.
Nineteen
“Cut your losses. You got the horses. You got the supplies. And you got One Eye waiting for you in Texas. You promised me you’d go and kill the bastard. You promised the others, too. But more importantly, you promised me. A man is nothing if he can’t keep his promises, kid. I taught you that, remember?”
It was the Old Man’s voice in his head, but it wasn’t really the Old Man saying those words. It was Wash’s imagining of what the old timer would have said if he were here right now.
“So she saved your life,” Imaginary Old Man continued. “You more than paid that back at the campsite with Travis and the other two bozos. What, exactly, do you think you still owe her?”
The Old Man was right. He had paid Ana back; he’d taken out Travis for her, and he was pretty sure she would have been toast if he hadn’t. He’d put three men into the ground, not that he was having second thoughts about what he’d done or anything. Travis, Duncan, and Chris were animals. Wash would snuff out their lives a second time if presented with the same choice, knowing what they’d done to Teresa.
“She’s not going to make it out of that cabin alive. Mathison is going to waste her,” Imaginary Old Man said.
He’s going to do more than that.
“Yeah, but it’s not your fault. You did your best. Beyond the call of duty, kid. Time to cut your losses and move on. Next!”
Except Wash didn’t move on, because he couldn’t. And he didn’t believe the Old Man would tell him to do so if he were actually here. The old timer believed in justice, and if presented with a choice to cut bait and run or do what was right, he would always choose the right path.
So why did I just imagine him telling me to get the hell out of Dodge?
Because you want to believe he’d say that, to justify your own cowardice, that’s why.
Maybe it was a little bit of cowardice—or was it common sense? He didn’t know, but he spent about an hour thinking about it, watching the sun dipping beyond the tree canopies doing so.
Another hour, maybe less, before nightfall.
That was fine. Night didn’t present him with the same kind of dangerous rush that it used to. Ghouls were no longer the threat they once were since The Walk Out. They were smaller in number and manageable. The four outside of Harrisonville hadn’t taken very much effort to dispatch. Wash had faced more than that at once, all alone, and left without a scratch.
“Yeah, but you didn’t have holes in you during all those other times, kid.”
That reminded him to pop the last two Tramadol. He almost tossed the sheet, but remembered that Mathison’s people could still be searching for him in the woods, and shoved it back into his pack instead so as not to leave a trail. He didn’t know how good these guys were, but there was little point in throwing them a bone.
He had moved a good two miles back from the cabin just to clear space for himself to think without being accidentally stumbled upon. That, and to get ready for what was coming. He’d spent a lot of that time trying to justify abandoning Ana, even coming up with the Old Man’s imaginary argument.
It hadn’t worked.
The problem with nightfall wasn’t his safety—Wash had long ago lost any fear of the darkness—but the horses’. There were no buildings to keep them in and no abandoned houses to be found in the woods since they left Kanter 11 this morning. His choices were to return to Kanter or risk the animals out here as he made his move on the cabin.
And he had to do it at night. Not now, not while Ana’s capture was still too fresh in everyone’s minds. Mathison and his crew would be too wired after this evening. All eight of them.
Eight. There had to be all eight of them around, didn’t it? A few more couldn’t have broken off like Travis and the other two had done.
No, there had to be all eight of them.
He needed to give them the rest of the day to calm down, for their adrenaline to run its course. But that was it. He couldn’t wait longer than one day. God only knew what Mathison would do to Ana. If he hadn’t already shot her like he’d been fully prepared to do earlier, and would have undoubtedly succeeded, if Emily hadn’t stopped him.
Emily…
The girl had thrown herself at Mathison, but before that she had come out of the cabin by herself with the bucket of water. She’d been walking like a free woman, not someone who had been torn from her home and marched across two states. The sight of Mathison following her outside had surprised both Wash and Ana.
What the hell was going on back there?
Not that it mattered to him right now. Ana was the important key. Wash had promised to help her get her sister back, and regardless of what the sister’s motivations were, it was still Ana who held his marker, and a man always paid back what he owed. That was something the Old Man always said, not this fake version Wash had been using to try to convince himself to turn tail and run.
He got ready for the night by carefully selecting his tools. He had a choice between the Mossberg and the M4, and decided to go with the shotgun for its effectiveness at short range. After all, if everything went according to plan, he’d be seeing Mathison and his boys up close an
d personal. Buckshot was the way to go for that occasion.
Wash hid the bulk of his supplies where they wouldn’t be found by man or nightcrawler, then left the horses standing free, because tying them up during the night would have been cruel if something were to stumble across them. What were the chances the animals would still be here when he came back?
Probably about as good a chance as you surviving this and getting to Texas, buddy.
He sighed at the somber thought before starting on his journey back to the cabin. The woods were already darkening around him, the last glimpses of sunlight quickly fading, and with that a noticeable drop in temperature. Wash barely felt it, a combination of his thick thermal clothing and the adrenaline pumping through his veins at the prospect of the violence yet to come.
“You’re nuts, kid,” Imaginary Old Man said. “You’re going to get yourself killed. One against eight. And every single one of them a cold-blooded murderer. I thought I taught you better than this.”
Wash grinned and thought, Yeah, you did, old timer. That’s why I’m going back. This is all your fault.
He had never been shy about killing, and the Old Man saw the killer in him a long time ago and turned it into something decent, maybe even “good,” if that definition could be stretched. But Wash didn’t think he was good. Or decent. He just was.
And right now, he was going to kill a lot of people, not because he wanted to, but because it had to be done.
“Do what you have to do, but make sure you stick by your decisions,” the Old Man had said. “The only thing worse than a man who doesn’t act is one who does and then tries to run away from his choices.”
He thought of the Old Man’s words as he crouched near the clearing and watched the cabin from a distance. His only companions were the animals in the trees and the melodic tick-tick-tick-tick of the automatic watch on his left wrist.
There were no guards standing outside the cabin and no signs of Mathison’s men anywhere in the area. Wash had been careful about his return, approaching his target from a different direction and stopping frequently to listen for telltale signs of human presence other than his own. He’d been out in the wilds long enough to know what ambushes looked like, and there were none in his path. At least, none that he could detect.
After The Purge: Vendetta Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 17
